Author
Topic: Central Nervous System Windup (Read 245 times)

I am 28 years old, have been dealing with generalized anxiety disorder for perhaps a decade or so. It comes and goes. It's affect on my life has been quite substantial.

Over the last few years, my anxiety has gotten much better. I owe this to meditation and mindfulness training. I used to suffer from social anxiety, insomnia and just being high strung all the time. I've managed to overcome these and they don't affect my life all that much anymore.

What brings me here today is hypochondria. I can't seem to shake this. I don't feel stressed out in life so I dont' understand why these strange physical sensations arise that are the symptoms of anxiety (shaking, dizziness, jerky movements, internal vibrating, twitching, depersonalization, sunburnt skin, etc). They do seem to come out of nowhere. I wake up and I might feel a bit weird physically so I begin convincing myself that I have a healthy problem (MS, ALS, etc) . I also do suffer from hypoglycemia so sometimes this affects my adrenaline levels.

Is it possible that it will take a long time for these symptoms to disappear? I didn't manage my stress properly for years, so my auto-pilot was always on high stress. Everything stressed me out. For years and years. I dont' feel stressed out, so I don't understand why these symptoms arise. Sometimes they arise from even drinking too much coffee!

Is it just that my CNS will take a long time to calm down as I reorient it? I am much calmer than I used to be so it's puzzling why I still get these psuedo-anxiety attacks. They're never in response to stimulus that I'm aware of.

I wonder about the HA a lot as well. What I do know is that people with HA are on heightened alert to every physical sensation we get. What most people would just feel and dismiss as nothing we hold onto it and try to figure out the cause. In the end it comes down to control. Wanting to control everything an fearing the things that we feel are outside our control like certain health issues.

Working on acceptance has helped me a great deal. Accepting that much of what I feel is just anxiety or my body's nature response to the environment or it's processes had helped me to feel less anxious about the physical symptoms. My doctor once said that the human body is a difficult place to live. It is so true.